Posted on Mon, Apr. 07, 2008

Is it a coincidence the two coaches leading teams into tonight's national championship game started at the same place?

Or is it perfectly sensible, given that place was Kansas?

After all, the first coach in KU history was the inventor of basketball, James Naismith. The second coach in KU history is the namesake for one of the grandest sports venues in the country, Allen Fieldhouse.

So it is with great pride that John Calipari, the coach of Memphis, looks back on his three years as a graduate assistant at Kansas, years he calls the best of his life.

Ditto for Jayhawk coach Bill Self, an Oklahoma State alum who worked for KU coach Larry Brown during the 1985-86 season.

"I went out there to Kansas with two pairs of shoes, three pairs of slacks, a blue blazer, three shirts and two ties, happy as hell," Calipari said.

He had worked at a 1982 camp at which Bob Hill, then a Kansas assistant under Ted Owens, was running. They started talking and when Owens stopped by, he asked Calipari, who had just graduated from Clarion State in his native Pennsylvania, about joining the staff. Kansas might as well have been on the moon.

But he took the offer without hesitation. It was basketball, after all, and he was a junkie. Better yet, it was Kansas basketball.

"I was with Ted Owens and then I was with Larry Brown," Calipari said. "To eat, I worked at the training table and I would serve peas or corn. But you know what? It was the greatest time of my life. I remember the first time I was in Allen Fieldhouse, the old locker room, and I went in and it was old. I'm thinking, 'Phog Allen showered in this shower.' I mean, it was old."

Self had just finished his playing career when his friend, R.C. Buford, now the general manager of the San Antonio Spurs, helped him land Calipari's GA job -- Calipari had taken an assistant's job at Pittsburgh.

Self had similar experiences as Calipari -- he was poor, working for practically nothing, and loving it.

"I think my jobs were much more meaningful than serving peas and corn, though," Self said. "I was in charge of making sure we rented out the correct bowling alley on game days and numerous things like that. If you know Coach Brown, you know he's very, very, very superstitious. Because if you bowl and you play (basketball) well, you probably played well because you bowled on a certain lane. It had nothing to do with Danny (Manning). So, I had many responsibilities like that.

"But making $4,500 a year, being a grad student, all that stuff -- I don't know if I could have had more fun than what I had that year in Lawrence."

There is just something about the place that breathes basketball. You feel it when you're in Allen Fieldhouse, as anybody who has ever been there will tell you. It's different from other basketball venues.

"Until you visit it, you can't feel it," Self said. "People that haven't been to Lawrence don't get it because it is different. I'm sure Cal would say the same thing."

Calipari showed up in Lawrence shortly after the filming of the television movie "The Day After," depicting the after-effects of a nuclear attack on Lawrence and Kansas City.

During his first days as a grad assistant, he slept on one of the cots used during filming because they were stored inside Allen Fieldhouse, which was used as a medical facility in the movie.

"I had to put a piece of wood under it, but that was my first bed," he said. "I'm telling you, though, that was such a great time in my life. I had no worries. I had no money. I did have a car and we had different places we ate on different days because it was the cheapest place to go. It was just fun."

Though Self and Calipari never worked together at KU, they are friends because of their close relationships with Brown, who has been everywhere during the Final Four. On Sunday, he was in the KU locker room before the Jayhawks' practice and spent time on the Riverwalk with Calipari during the morning. He has been an equal-opportunity supporter for North Carolina (where he played) and UCLA (where he coached), too.

He has a bond to many coaches, one that is especially strong with the two coaches whose teams will be on center stage tonight.

"I've known Cal for quite some time," Self said. "I was a player at Oklahoma State when he started out coaching at Kansas. He got the assistant's job at Pitt right before I got to KU, so our paths never crossed. But everybody knew Cal and liked Cal."

Calipari said he looks forward to coaching against Self in tonight's game.

"What Bill has done at Oral Roberts, then he went to Tulsa and did exactly the same thing, and then he went to Illinois," Calipari said. "That team that went to the Final Four from Illinois was his team. Now he's at Kansas doing the same thing. He's a good man and he's a great coach.

"We're two competitive coaches, but it's easier for me when I like somebody than it is when I really want to beat somebody, because that gets me off point. I'd rather have a guy I really respect and like. Let me go coach against that guy and have fun doing it."

Self's appreciation for Lawrence has only grown during the five years he has been KU's coach. It's everything he thought it would be.

"There's a yearning for another championship," Self said. "I think when you talk about tradition and history, there's other great programs that have it. But nobody has the inventor of the game as their first coach. It's a great responsibility to be the head coach at Kansas. I've said this before, we have the most realistic unrealistic fans around."

Eagle sports columnist Bob Lutz co-hosts "Sports Daily" from 9-11 a.m. weekdays on KFH, 1240-AM and 98.7-FM. Reach him at 316-268-6597 or blutz@wichitaeagle.com.